The Omicron Legion (31 page)

What are you?

Mira asked that question in her mind in the instant before her hand was caught between desperate flailing motions. She felt a grasp of steel close on her fingers and wrench them savagely backward.

Crack!

Her scream from the resulting pain would have been even louder than the snap if her face hadn’t been shoved into the cushion of the chair. He had broken the fingers cleanly at the joints. They flapped helplessly, like the limbs of a puppet with no strings attached. The thing over her jammed downward with a thrust strong enough to split the chair, then forced her facedown into its innards. She knew she was dying now and just wanted it to come fast, wanted the pain to be gone.

Bartholomew kept her there a very long time. He liked to feel people die, especially the precise moment death claimed them. But he also enjoyed the moments that came after. He imagined life didn’t pour from them, it seeped, and he kept at it until he had swallowed in all there was to take.

It had been over much too fast this time.

Much too fast.

All things considered, the thing Berg liked most about America was french fries. He ate them by the dozens, liking best the fast-food variety the magazines said were loaded with fat and cholesterol. Berg wasn’t worried. He figured he’d never live long enough for cholesterol to kill him.

He’d purchased three extra-large servings at the McDonald’s across the street after sliding the bomb into place beneath the target’s car. It was parked in the lot of the plant the target owned and operated. Getting to the car posed only a minor difficulty. Berg had pretended to be doing some filler work on the asphalt parking lot to permit him access underneath its chassis.

“About time they got these potholes fixed,” someone said to him right after he had slid back out. Berg smiled in the man’s direction, wondering if he had noticed anything. But the man sauntered off without another word, and Berg was safely off to stow his equipment in the trunk. Then he headed for his fries.

By the time his target emerged two hours later, Berg was ravenous again. He’d blow the sucker as soon as he was inside and then pick up another four orders before pulling off. Guy said good-bye to everyone he passed, by name, Berg could tell, smiling a lot. Berg had never liked killing nice people, but he didn’t get to choose very often. Arabs were the best to kill, and he’d done that plenty of times—they were seldom nice.

And they made lousy french fries.

Berg smiled at his own joke as he activated the detonator. He saw the target climb into his car and close the door behind him. Berg noticed a stray fry on the floor of his car and stuffed it into his mouth as he was pushing the button.

He was still chewing when the blast blew him into oblivion. He had no awareness of anything other than a sudden flash and maybe, just maybe, a realization that he had become the victim here; he hadn’t noticed the switch because he was out buying the damn french fries.

In fact, the bomb worked better than Berg had even hoped for. So well that it took fire and rescue authorities nearly thirty minutes to ascertain there had actually been someone inside his car.

Berg’s target was among the first on the scene to see if he could lend any assistance.

The thing was, Khan liked to kill. He wasn’t sure exactly how that had happened, but what little Chinese philosophy he knew attributed it to birth. He was Mongolian, actually, and by any standards a huge man. He had practiced his trade first as an enforcer on the docks of Shanghai and later as an assassin for the Tong. Knives, guns, hatchets—the weapon mattered not at all. Khan liked his sticks best. He loved his sticks.

The sensation of twirling the galvinized steel, making it whistle through the air en route to its target was the most fulfilling thing he could imagine. Yes, the sticks—combined with his incredible quickness—made for deadly effectiveness. He could follow a man without the man ever knowing. If he stopped to gaze back, Khan would be gone, the action undertaken in the same instant it took the target to swing round. He had shaved his head for as long as he could remember, because hair was something a foe could grasp if the kill had to be made in close. He allowed himself a thick Manchurian-style mustache—he wasn’t worried that anyone would grab that.

But tonight he had plenty more to worry about. The last two men on his kill list had disappeared before he could get to them. He had planned on going for a third today, only to find that he, too, had vanished. Khan did not know who to blame. Could the white-faced man have betrayed him somehow, sent others to do his job for him? Perhaps the brutality of his earlier kills had disturbed the whiteface.

He always stayed in rundown, seedy hotels when on the job, and cover was only part of the reason. Khan actually liked the feeling they brought with them, full of the mad, the failed, and the helpless. He fed off their thoughts and the stink of their souls. He could kill them all, not a single room spared, if he chose.

Not tonight, though. He was a half block from the shabby hotel where he was currently staying in downtown Chicago, on the outskirts of Wrigleyville, when he veered away. Something was wrong. Someone was watching for him. He could see nothing, and that bothered Khan. The enemy always,
always,
revealed itself somehow—if not by sight or sound, then at least by feeling.

Khan kept walking and jumped on the L the first chance he got. He rode it for over an hour, switching trains regularly. Then, judging he was safe, he jumped off and hailed a cab after a short walk. The meter had rung up close to thirty dollars before Khan was satisfied no one was following him. He got out and took to the alleys and back streets that had been his home since his early years in Shanghai. He could sleep without giving up his senses, use garbage for cover, if necessary.

Khan had embraced the thick darkness of a garbage-strewn alley when he realized someone was behind him. Certain he had not been followed, Khan assumed it was just some hopeless bum whose turf he had invaded. He would kill him fast and be done with it, then give himself up to the blessed night for refuge.

The sound of a misplaced step froze his thinking.

He wants me to know he’s back there.

Khan wasn’t sure where that thought originated because it made no sense. He dismissed it and ducked into hiding, melting into the scenery so he might see his adversary pass by.

No one passed. No one came. There was only the night before him.

Khan stayed as he was, rooted in place, one with the garbage cans about him. Someone was out there all right, someone who was very skilled in his own right, which was just fine.

Because Khan had his sticks.

He drew them fast and twirled them nimbly into gripping position. Held them low by the hips, ready to whisk in any direction in the shadow of an instant.

He was just turning to check behind him when the hand closed over his throat from the rear. The pressure against his windpipe would have snapped off his Adam’s apple if instinct hadn’t made him twist his head enough for his powerful neck muscles to save his life. Sucking in what breath he could, he spun away and lashed at his attacker with his sticks.

The blows struck nothing. The attacker was gone.

He came up behind me, and I never even heard him….

Khan swung around suddenly, and a savage kick pounded the back of his head from the direction he had been facing until a second before. The blow thrust him back against the garbage cans, and he whirled to be met with a blow that split two of his ribs on impact. Another blow was aimed for his face; Khan deflected it with one of his sticks and countered with a strike for his opponent’s solar plexus. It drew a grunt when it should have resulted in a kill! No man could still be standing, no man!

But this one was—he countered with a combination series of fists that pounded Khan’s right cheek and jaw. Khan realized the awful splintering sounds in his ears were his own bones breaking. Yet he was able to jump back to make time and distance his allies. The figure before him was considerably smaller than he was, which perhaps accounted for why he hadn’t been able to finish Khan off when the advantage was his. Well, he’d had his chance and missed it. Khan bellowed and unleashed the fury of his sticks in a blurred frenzy.

The disciple named Thaddeus elected to hold his position. He had been expecting more of the giant Mongol than this. There had to be some sport, some enjoyment. He would bait him, let him have his chance to use the killing sticks.

Thaddeus stood his ground as Khan charged. The Mongol’s half-swollen face held no expression; the sticks twirled nimbly in his hands as he made his charge.

Khan lunged in with sticks crisscrossing the air in a vortex of death. Thaddeus caught the hands blurring through the night in midmotion. He twisted the Mongol’s arms together at the elbow and jerked them mightily. A snap as loud as a gunshot sounded, and one of the arms hung limply by the Mongol’s side.

Khan still had one stick left, which he sent into motion a breath before he saw the stick he had lost was in the hand of his opponent. The last thing he remembered was switching his motion to a blocking form—too late—as the enemy’s stick slid under the defense and bashed into his nose, driving the bone backward through his brain.

Khan stood there briefly before he crumpled, and Thaddeus wondered how it could have been so easy to kill a man of such reputation.

Fox was finished with the whole damn business. His first few kills had come smooth and sweet and then everything had fallen apart. Targets impossible to reach, or even to find. The wrong man killed on the most recent occasion. Messy, very messy, and Fox hated mess above everything else.

Well, fuck the albino Japper and his mother, too.

Fox hit his home turf of Boston running, making straight for the bank that held his safe-deposit box. He’d clean out the cash and jewels and disappear for a while. The Jap fuck wouldn’t know the difference, and his whole plan was gonzo anyway.

Fox had just finished emptying the contents of his safe-deposit box into his black leather briefcase when the lights in the cubicle died. The silenced Beretta was in his hand a second later, while the other hand found the doorknob and twisted it open. The whole damn, windowless box area was pitch-black. A power failure now. If that didn’t beat fuck all…

Fox heard the sound just before he started to head in the general direction of the exit door. Someone else was with him in the darkness. Not another customer, obviously; he was alone when he came in, and no one had entered since. The guard, then, perhaps…

The sound came again, not made by a guard at all, because a guard would have spoken and wouldn’t have tried to conceal his presence.

Fox fired a silenced round in its direction.

Another sound sprang from the opposite side of the twenty-foot square room filled wall to wall with safe-deposit boxes. Fox fired again, and this time the bullet ricocheted madly.

I know you’re in here, fucker.

The sound of rushing footsteps sounded to his right, and Fox shot that way. More footsteps came from the left, and he wasted two more bullets.

There’s more than one of them, he thought. There’s gotta be. Well, that suits me just fine!

Fox slid away from the door to the cubicle and pressed his back against the middle row of safe-deposit boxes against the far wall. Muzzle flashes would give him away sure as shit. He’d keep his ass calm and make sure he had something to fire at next time before he shot. Better yet, better yet…

Fox holstered the Beretta and pulled out a killing knife courtesy of cool, blue Vietnam. The separation of sounds told him three figures were in the darkness with him. Just like the good ol’ days as a tunnel rat, squeezing his big frame into the passageways dug by gooks and slitting their throats as he passed them along the way. Yup, darkness suited him just fine.

Fox moved away from the boxes and joined the darkness. He owned the fuckin’ night in Nam, and he would own the asses of the men who had invaded this darkness. If he couldn’t shoot them, they weren’t about to shoot him, which placed the odds in his favor.

I’m gonna get you, motherfucka!

Fox figured the enemy was shittin’ their pants trying to find him in the pitch-black, when he walked straight into a gun barrel. Nothing behind it he could feel, just cold steel touching his forehead.

“Hey!”

Fox had time to scream that as he whipped his blade out at a target as untouchable as gas. Funny thing was he heard the gun go off, actually heard the shot that blew the brains out the back of his head.

The disciple named Peter did not need the light to see. Yes, the darkness kept him from seeing shapes, but auras showed up plain as day, and he decided to taunt this one before finishing the job. All in all, it was boring, disappointing.

There had to be someone out there who could provide a bit of a challenge.

Somewhere.

Part Five
Vision Quest

The bunker:
Thursday, December 5, 1991; 7:00
A.M.

Chapter 30

EVEN THOUGH THE BUNKER’S
conference hall was huge, those seated at the table felt cramped and uneasy. Only the shape seated in the shadows at the front of the room remained immobile as always, apparently unfazed by the exchange of words that had been going on for some minutes now.

“I’m telling you, it’s out of control!”

The voice of Virginia Maxwell, droning into the hall through an unseen speaker from Gap headquarters in Newport News, had a desperate ring to it.

“Nothing is ever out of control.” These words emerged from the shape at the front of the room.

“This is an exception, and I am not the one to blame for it,” the head of the Gap said. “I did not lose McCracken in Brazil.”

“But you were the one who insisted we involve him in the first place.”

“I had nothing to do with the series of failures that followed. Using him for our own best interests was the best track to take. If everything had gone as planned, he would have eliminated the six killers and led us to Takahashi himself.”